Here
by EleanorK
Summary: Right here," she said, crawling toward him. Her knees bumped against his. She pulled her shirt over her head and tossed it on his lap. Her bra had tiny frogs all over it. "You say no," she said. "But don't do it out of manners. Right here isn't about manners."


He remembers the night at the country club and it still embarrasses him. The way she screamed at him. The stupid things she did. The money he stuffed in his pack. The way she jumped in the moldy swimming pool, through a skim of dead leaves, then swam around, gasping at the cold, laughing. The way she took off all her clothes right then and there, naked. Stared at him. Like she was mad at him looking. Like she couldn't believe he'd bother to look, too. "You think I'm going to wear that shit when I have a choice? You're out of your damn mind. New clothes in that gift shop." He looked down and waited until she passed him. But then he'd had no choice but to follow her, protect her. And of course he had to look.

* * *

This was a rule Merle didn't bother with. The young girls; he didn't give a shit. "I ain't checking IDs," he'd tell Daryl, if they went somewhere and the girls were spindly, young. Dumb. They practically moved without knowing how they were prey.

It wasn't that he didn't think they were cute. That he couldn't put himself back to that age, being 16, wanting sex so bad he could barely see straight.

It was just: they moved like prey. He couldn't look at people like that back then. And part of that had endured, even now.

* * *

Beth didn't move like that. She was in his face but not trying to catch his eye. She was trying to wake him up, he knew it. But he didn't trust what would come if he let her. He was sure it would break him, facing everything he'd lost.

He was glad when they didn't find the right booze. He was able to take charge again. Push through. The only thing he was good at was surviving. He was just getting a handle on being in charge when the prison had fallen. Merle had made him such a good soldier.

* * *

She wanted to play games. Cheer him up, maybe? She wanted to drink like some middle schooler. He wanted to tell her that not only was there no time for that now, he'd never made time for it then. That he'd quit going to school in when he was 16, hadn't made it past the 9th grade. No one cared what he did, anyway. Once Merle was back for good, it was more convenient for him not to have to wait on Daryl's education.

"As if you give a shit about academics," Merle said, while Daryl hesitated on the decision. "Lookit you. Not exactly _college-bound_."

Merle was a fucking liar. Merle read all the time; got into the habit when he was locked up. Their mother had her romance stories, all burnt up now. She'd read to them when they were kids. Now Daryl would have done it, would have picked up a book, especially where Merle wasn't there to tease him, the hypocrite. But there wasn't time like that much anymore.

So he made her drink. And he let her talk. And she was pushing, he could tell. Pushing at him to talk back. Pushing at him to lay his losses beside hers: Maggie, Herschel, everyone at the prison they'd lost, her family turned back at the burned out farm.

He knew it was helping her. He knew it was the booze, too; she wasn't used to it. He pulled back the bottle. She curled into herself. He kept watching her, her new clothes all blood-spattered and dirty.

It wasn't until she brought up Judith. Then Carol. Then Rick. Then he knew couldn't hold it in. He let it out, and she stood for it. Took it. Still, he knew the minute the tears fell that they'd have to burn it all down. The whole miserable house. Burn it all down. Fuck it.

* * *

She was pissed when she sprained her ankle. She'd just been getting the hang of things. It was like she needed to go through the dirty swimming pool and the new bloody clothes and the long list of the dead and a mason jar of booze and she wasn't quite the predator, but close. Very close. He saw in her eyes the frustration at being helpless. At needing him.

He carried her, and she was heavy, but it didn't matter. Something switched in him at this. Maybe some old idea of being manly and rescuing her. Or maybe it was touching her. Feeling her tits against his back. He felt the guilt at that. She was what? 17? 18?

She smelled like the fire from the house. She smelled like dirt and blood. And still he was hard. He was glad she couldn't see the front of him. Or his face.

* * *

When they got to the funeral home, he was wary, as usual. It wasn't that there were dead bodies. It was that it was so tidy and proper. That didn't seem normal in the first place, and it sure didn't seem safe. But he couldn't see any sign of current occupants. Maybe it was left untouched because of its associations with the dead? Nobody wanted more of that, these days.

They ate. They set up their gear. He checked every entrance and she collected some water from the cistern to boil.

* * *

When night fell, he was anxious. Weak. He couldn't sort it out. It wasn't her banging on the piano, though he guessed that wasn't a wise move. It wasn't just the too-good-to-be-true nature of the house, either. It was her, nudging next to him at the table, spooning into his jar of peanut butter. It was her, at his back while he washed his hands in the waste water they'd used to boil rice. It was them sitting across from each other, the lantern between them in the middle of the parlor. Her complaining of the heat and stripping off her clothes til she was down to her underwear and t-shirt. Staring at him while he sharpened his knives. Talking at him. Always talking.

"What," he said, when her talk stopped.

"You know, you're right," she said.

"Heh," he said, smiling to himself. "Finally figured that out, huh?"

"About none of this shit mattering," she said. "It doesn't. We've got to be done with what's gone. What was. We can't keep living back there. If we do, we'll die right here."

He set his knife down, the chamois and whetstone on his knee. She put down her cup of boiled water.

"Right here," she repeated, crawling toward him. Her knees bumped against his. She moved the chamois and whetstone to the floor beside the knife. She pulled her shirt over her head and tossed it on his lap. Her bra had tiny frogs all over it.

"You say no if you want," she said. "But don't do it out of manners. Right here isn't about manners."

Her hands rested on his shoulders. He could see the rise and fall of her little breasts in the frog bra. Her belly had a little curve around it that made him feel even weaker than before.

He reached toward her, his fingers spoked around her belly button. She shivered.

"Not about manners, then," he said. He wanted to ask what it was about, but she kissed him so hard he nearly tipped over.

* * *

He knew what to do; it wasn't that. He had done this before a handful of times and in the same kind of desperate circumstances - someone else's house, in the dark, late at night.

But just like the swimming pool and the moonshine and the tracking, he wanted her to decide. He wanted only what she wanted. He wanted to see it: her wanting him, her knowing him this way. Her feeling him everywhere, even in the dim lantern light. He couldn't stop looking.

The other times, the sex was all him. Him, thinking about himself. His body. If anyone'd interrupt them. That kind of shit.

But this time, with this girl who he'd never looked at like more than another person he needed to fend for, he forgot himself. Even as she stripped him down to nothing. Even as she sucked and licked. As she touched and petted and rubbed, her hands gripping his hipbones, her mouth on his dick for just a minute, her tits crushing against his chest. And he let himself touch and pet and rub, too; he wasn't some soft-cock just lying there doing nothing. He liked seeing her eyes close as he squeezed her; liked grabbing her hips and ass, liked the softness of her belly. Liked peeling off the frog bra to suck her tits. Pawing through her panties to feel how wet and ready she was.

He was in no hurry and she seemed fine with that. It was like time at stopped, he thought, licking her again, neck to belly, belly to pussy.

_Right here. Everything: right here. _

* * *

"I'm not a virgin," she said. "I want to fuck you. It's not going to hurt me."

"I know," he said.

He was stalling about birth control. He'd had condoms at one point, but they'd decayed in the heat and he'd tossed them back in Atlanta.

But she had no time for that. He should have known what it meant, that this was a sign, when she climbed on top of him and shuddered herself over his cock, bare.

He about came right that minute, he'd been so surprised.

But she had other ideas. She was slow. Pinning him to the floor, her hands on his wrists. Kissing him all over his face, her hair dangling and tickling around his jaw.

_I give_, he thought. _I give._

She rode him like she'd been born to it, like she'd known nothing but that. It wasn't about manners. Or being old enough. Or knowing how to do things. It was just was right here.

He reached up for her tits to rub and squeeze them; she bent down to kiss him, her mouth soft and swollen. He knew they didn't have so much time. But it didn't feel that way. Felt like time itself was gone.

* * *

He could have come, but then she tumbled off.

"No," she said. "I want to show you and you show me."

"What the fuck?" he asked. "Beth..."

"You might as well learn now," she said. "We don't have time to flirt anymore, Daryl. So just watch." She laid beside him, her head next to his, and he sat up and did what she asked. Watched as she pressed her palm to her pussy, her fingers working herself. Her eyes closed, her nipples jacked up, her pussy so wet he could hear it all slippery under her fingers.

He watched her and she pushed him again. His hand against his own cock. He knelt above her, watching, his hand on himself. Unbelievable that he'd do this in front of another person, much less her.

She came before him, her feet flexed, her toes curling. Her face tight as she gasped and cried. It went on for a while. Longer than he'd imagined a woman could do that, and he regretted all he'd never noticed before when it came to sex.

She pulled him back into her and when he entered her again, it was even softer and tighter and hotter than before. He came minutes later and when he opened his eyes, she was watching him. Smiling.

* * *

But then the next day happened. And then she was gone. He should have known that would be the hand the world dealt him; he'd get this good thing, he'd learn what he never knew he needed to learn, he'd see himself, someone else would see him for what he was, truly, but that would be it. Gone. A black car speeding down the dirt road, her pack in a pile on the gravel.

Right here, she'd said. The black car speeding away in his mind, keeping him running down the road for miles until he couldn't stand any longer.

He sunk to the ground. Remembered her crawling toward him. The frog bra. The curve around her belly, his hand circling around it like a clock.

_I give._


End file.
